February Musicians Birthdays with Stamps

It is time to celebrate February musicians birthdays with stamps. A lot of musicians and composers appear on stamps. You can read about many of them on this blog, from classical composers to American pop stars. Yet, in order to highlight a few more of these stamps and the musicians on them, I am sharing a monthly calendar of musicians birthdays. It will not even be close to complete. Yet, each moth I will select a few stamps from my collection and share them with links to relevant articles elsewhere on my blog. If you are looking for more musician birthdays you can check out this site.

February Birthdays

February 1
Victor Herbert (1859-1924) was an American classical conductor and composer who was born on the island of Guernsey. Although he originally wanted to study medicine, by the time he was a teenager he was accomplished on the cello. He attended the Stuttgart Conservatory and graduated in 1879. He moved to the United States in 1886, having been hired as the cellist for the Metropolitan Opera. Herbert went on to gain fame as a composer of light operettas that played on Broadway in the 1890s.

James P. Johnson (1894-1955) was an American jazz pianist and composer. He was one of the key figures in early jazz, particularly in developing stride piano out of the rhythms of ragtime. Johnson had a significant influence on pianists of the swing era, including Count Basie, Duke Elington, and Art Tatum. He was a prolific composer, whose most famous song was “The Charleston.”

February 3
Johann Georg Albrechtsberger (1736-1809) was an Austrian organist and composer. He was a friend of both Haydn and Mozart and was a teacher for the younger Ludwig van Beethoven. In 1792, he was appointed as the Kapellmeister for St. Stephen’s Cathedral.

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) was a German pianist and composer. He was born into a prominent Jewish family and his grandfather was a well known philosopher. Mendelssohn’s musical talents were evident at an early age, though his parents discouraged him from being a professional musician. Mendelssohn became well-known as a pianist and for his compositions, which were in the early Romantic style. Mendelssohn is also credited with reviving interest in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.

February 4
Bhimsen Joshi (1922-2011) was an Indian Hindustani classical vocalist. He is well-known for the khayal form of singing. Joshi gained international attention with tours to Afghanistan, Italy, France, Canada, and the United States beginning in the early 1960s. He also organized the annual Sawai Gandharva Music Festival in honor of his gura, Sawai Gandharva.

February 5
Ole Bull (1810-1880) was a Norwegian violinist. He was often compared to the Italian virtuoso Niccolo Paganini for his speed and volume. Bull was born in Bergen, Norway, and began playing violin at the age of 4 or 5. At the age of nine, he soloied with the Bergen Philharmonic and played first violin in the orchestra. It was only in the 1830s that he began to gain fame as a solo violinist and he began travelling across Europe, and was one of the first European musicians to also tour extensively in the United States.

February 6
Bob Marley (1945-1981) was a Jamaican reggae singer and songwriter. His music was a mix of reggae, ska, and rocksteady, and his distinctive vocal style led him to international acclaim. He began his career in 1963, when he joined a group that would be known as the Wailers. The group’s 1965 album contained the song “One Love.” They went on to have a number of important hits, though they broke up in 1974 (Marley continued to keep the band name). His first international hit was the song “No Woman, No Cry.” Marley died in 1981 at the age of 36.

February 7
Eubie Blake (1887-1983) was an American ragtime and jazz pianist and composer. His musical education began at the age of four or five when his parents bought a small reed pump organ for him to play. In addition to organ, he began playing piano, and at the age of 15 began playing in a bordello. He went on to write a number of jazz standards and is credited, along with Noble Sissie, for writing Shuffle Along, one of the first Broadway musicals to be written and directed by African Americans.

February 9
Alban Berg (1885-1935) was an Austrian composer. He is remembered as one of the most important composers of the twentieth century for his work bridging late Romanticism with twelve-tone serialism. His operas Wozzeck (1924) and Lulu (1935) are his best known works.

February 11
Josh White (1914-1969) was an American folk singer, guitarist, and songwriter. He grew up in the segregated south of the 1920s and 1930s and became making “race records.” White was known for performing a wide variety of styles ranging from country blues to gospel, jazz, gospel, and traditional folk songs. He became a leading figure in the Civil Rights movement.

February 12
Roberta Martin (1907-1969), American gospel singer, pianist, and composer. Born in Helena Arkansas, at the age of 10, her family moved to Chicago. There, she was able to study the piano. She accompanied the Young People’s Choir at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where she met the “Father of Gospel Music,” Thomas A. Dorsey. Later, she led the Roberta Martin Singers, which became one of the most successful gospel singing groups.

Ray Manzarek (1939-2013) was an American rock keyboardist, singer, and member of The Doors. As a student in UCLA’s film program, he met Jim Morrison. The two only began to play together after graduation, leading Manzarek to recruit Robby Krieger (guitar) and John Densmore (drums) to join them. The Doors went on to have several hits including “Light My Fire,” and “Come On Through (To The Other Side).”

February 14
Heikki Klemetti (1876-1953) was a Finnish choral conductor and composer. He founded a men’s choir in 1900, which became a mixed chorus in 1907. It was beloved throughout Finland and eventually toured Scandinavia and Europe. The choir even traveled to the United States in 1939. He led the choir until 1942, when because of World War II, it was disbanded.

February 17
Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713) was an Italian violinist and composer. Corelli was born in the small town of Fusignano in the state of Romagna. As a child, Corelli studied the violin with a priest in the town of Faenza, until moving in 1666 to Bologna, which had a thriving scene for violinists. By 1675, Corelli had moved to Rome, where he played in ensembles for important occasions, wrote music, and probably taught. He gained the greatest attention for his compositions and his work set the template for both the sonata and the concerto as musical forms.

February 18
Pedro Figueredo (1818-1870) was a poet, musician, and “freedom fighter” in nineteenth century Cuba. He is best known as the composer of the Cuban national anthem. He was captured during an uprising against the Spanish and executed in 1870.

February 21
Andres Segovia (1893-1987) was a Spanish classical guitarist. He is credited with creating the international movement of “classical” guitar playing and his arrangements and recordings have inspired generations of guitarists.

February 23
George Frederick Handel (1685-1759) was a German composer of the late baroque. He spent the majority of his career in Britain where he became known for his large scale vocal works including both religious oratorios and secular operas. His best-known work is The Messiah.

February 25
Enrico Caruso (1873-1921) was an Italian operatic tenor. He gained fame across Europe and his appearances in the Americas helped opera to become a celebrated art form in the western hemisphere. Caruso was also one of the first singers to be commercially recorded, which helped him attain international fame.

February 27
Marian Anderson (1897-1993) was an American operatic contralto. She became a popular soloist with major orchestras and in concert halls in both the United States and Europe. In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow her to sing to an integrated audience in Constitution Hall. Anderson was placed in the spotlight of racial tensions, but First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt arranged for her to sing an open-air concert on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939 on the Lincoln Memorial steps.

Mildred Bailey (1907-1951) was an American jazz singer. She was Native American singer that became known as “The Queen of Swing” in the 1930s. Bailey supposedly helped a young Bing Crosby get work in Los Angeles, and he in turn introduced her to Paul Whiteman, who she sang with from 1929 to 1933. Her recording with Whiteman of “All of Me” was one of her three number one hits.

February 29
Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868) was an Italian composer. He is best remembered for his 39 operas, though he wrote for instrumental ensembles and solo instruments as well. Among his beloved operas are the The Barber of Seville and William Tell.